Buyer Intent Data in Sales Navigator is Key to Sales and Marketing Alignment

One of the largest growth levers for any business is marketing and sales alignment. 

In fact, according to findings by HubSpot, 87% of sales and marketing leaders agree that their collaboration is crucial for business growth. HubSpot also found that the top three benefits of organisations with aligned sales and marketing teams are increased revenue, improved customer experience, and improved lead quality.

But as a Chief of Growth at Tribal Impact, I can tell you that while it sounds simple in theory, it can be hard to execute. But it's well worth the effort. I've found LinkedIn Sales Navigator's Buyer Intent and HubSpot's lead scoring to be instrumental in bridging this gap. These tools have transformed our approach, enabling us to identify and act upon genuine interest from prospects much earlier, moving beyond assumptions to strategic, data-informed engagement.

In this article, I'll share how to use buyer intent data from Sales Navigator to help you become more strategic in how you sell. 

Understanding Buyer Intent Data in Sales Navigator

Buyer intent data shows you a prospect's engagement and interest level in your company. Note: Buyer Intent is only available for Sales Navigator Advanced and Advanced Plus users.

It is measured on a scale, not a score, encompassing four distinct stages. These stages reflect the degree of a company's interest in your business, gauged through their interactions on LinkedIn. Whether it's liking your ads, following your company page, or engaging with your content, each action sends a signal of intent.

This information is a cornerstone of our strategy at Tribal Impact allowing us to refine our focus, targeting companies showing genuine interest in our solutions. 

Through understanding and leveraging these intent signals, we can tailor our approach, ensuring we engage with prospects most likely to convert. And, by integrating buyer intent data with our CRM tool, HubSpot that offers further lead scoring, we've created a seamless flow of information that informs our outreach efforts, making every interaction count. 

On the other hand, buyer intent also helps us track progress of various campaigns focused on raising our brand’s awareness amongst certain, carefully selected target accounts that meet our ICP criteria.

Digital Ping Pong: Aligning Sales and Marketing 

One analogy that perfectly demonstrates why buyer intent is so important for sales and marketing efforts is the "Ping Pong" model that we created. This approach is about the back-and-forth, collaborative efforts between sales and marketing. Just as in a game of ping pong, the ball is passed back and forth; information and insights are shared fluidly between our teams, ensuring our strategies are not only reactive but proactive. 

Ensuring our sales and marketing teams are not just aligned but interlocked in their efforts is crucial, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator plays a pivotal role in this process. The tool's introduction of buyer intent data has been a game-changer, allowing us to move beyond the frustrating cycle of blame and missed opportunities that plague many organisations. 

It enables us to identify not just who to engage with but how to do so effectively, transforming our approach from guesswork to a strategy informed by real, actionable insights. By utilising the detailed information provided by Sales Navigator, we can see which companies are showing genuine interest in our solutions and tailor our outreach accordingly. 

This precision ensures that our marketing efforts are not just generating leads, but the right kind of leads, which sales can then pursue with confidence, knowing they're backed by solid data. This collaborative relationship between sales and marketing, facilitated by LinkedIn's tool, exemplifies the power of the ping pong model, where information is not just passed back and forth but builds momentum, driving our business forward. 

Leveraging LinkedIn Sales Navigator Drives Business Impact 

Sales Navigator has become our go-to tool for understanding and engaging with our target audience. By creating lists and generating alerts for key activities, we can engage meaningfully with our prospects, ensuring our brand stays top of mind. This soft engagement strategy, focusing on observing (researching) and engaging (nurturing) before direct messaging, has been pivotal in drawing potential clients closer to our 'campfire'. 

What do I mean by campfire? Imagine our engagement with prospects as a series of concentric circles around a warm, inviting campfire. The closest to the fire are our most engaged leads, those directly expressing a desire to collaborate. They're like guests at the campfire, eagerly holding out their sticks with sausages, basking in the warmth. This warmth represents the connection they feel with Tribal Impact, drawn in by our content, our messaging, and the solutions we offer.

Just beyond this inner circle are those who, while not yet reaching out, show a clear interest in our company through their actions—engaging with our ads, following our pages, and actively consuming the content we share. They are aware of Tribal Impact, not just passively but actively, engaging in a way that signals their readiness to move closer to the fire.

Further out, there's a group aware of the solutions similar to the ones we offer, perhaps intrigued by the concept of employee advocacy tools, but they haven't yet connected the dots back to us (the tool is not enough to run a successful employee advocacy program, you need an enablement solution that supports it). 

Our strategy involves crafting messages that resonate with each group's level of awareness and interest, guiding them closer to the fire, to where the heat is most intense.

This campfire analogy underpins our approach to social selling and content marketing, emphasising education and engagement over direct selling. It's about paving the way for our prospects, allowing them to feel the warmth of our expertise and solutions, and inviting them to join us by the fire, ready to engage in meaningful conversations about how we can help solve their challenges.

Advancing Sales Strategies with Buyer Intent Insights

Embracing LinkedIn's Sales Navigator’s Buyer Intent and Hubspot lead scoring data has fundamentally transformed how we approach sales and marketing alignment at Tribal Impact. 

With this information at our fingertips, we're now empowered with early-stage, data-driven insights that illuminate the path ahead, far beyond the conventional end-results analysis. 

This has revolutionised our ability to engage with prospects meaningfully, allowing us to discern and act upon genuine interest much earlier in the relationship-building process. No longer are we navigating the murky waters of assumed interest based on actions like workbook downloads alone. Instead, buyer intent data offers us a clear, actionable indication of a prospect's readiness to engage, enabling us to tailor our outreach more effectively and drive our conversations forward with precision and purpose. 

Sales Navigator goes beyond a mere tool; it's at the heart of how we bring our sales and marketing teams together, driving meaningful and effective collaboration. 

Get more out of Sales Navigator by reading these posts:

• 'Who’s Viewed Your LinkedIn Profile' — How to Use This Feature to Find New Clients
• Searching in Sales Navigator? These Filters Can Help You Find the People Who Matter Most.
• Sales Navigator Alerts: What They Are and How to Best Use Them
• How to Be Great at Reaching Out: What Every InMail Sent in 2022 Told Us
• Meet Account IQ: Our One-Stop Shop For Account Research
• What is Relationship Explorer And Why LinkedIn's Sellers Are Excited About It
  

Don’t have Sales Navigator? Start your free trial today or get it for your team.